Posts Tagged With: quotes by Andy

Opening day. Shots ring out at daylight and continue through the day. The next two weeks are not the best time to muck about in the park woods beyond our property.

We decide to hike on the Highbanks Trail from Lumberman’s Monument, along the mighty AuSable River.

The AuSable.

We weren’t the only one with this idea, but most of the walk Gus was free to run.

Gun runs back to make sure we’re still coming.

The water was glass, the air still. The sun was too warm for base layers.

Something about this water calms my soul.

Sand dune to the water.

We share an old joke, that we’ve found the Appalachian Trail, a throw-back to our first adventure. Back then, naive as we were, we anticipated that trail to be like this one, with gentle hills, a leaf and pine needle covered walkway with no roots to catch our toes.

A man and his dog. At 71, he paces easily with his walking stick.

Gus barges ahead to scout.

Checking out the trail ahead.

He never lingers out of sight, and covers twice the ground that we do.

One day before my story about wildfires is published in the Ogemaw County Voice, Andy sits working at his desk. The phone rings. It’s the conference call from Habitat International that he’s been expecting. As he eases back for what he knows will be an extended conversation, a flicker outside the window catches his eye.

“I’m going to have to drop off here for a minute,” he says dryly to the group, as dry as the brush in our rain-deprived woods. “My backyard is filled with smoke and fire.”

Drew replies, “That’s more creative than ‘my dog ate my homework.'”

Click.

A 9-1-1 call later and Andy gets back into the call while the Lupton Fire Department puts out a fire at the edge of our woods.

Is this irony?

The edge of our woods.

The cause of the fire was ashes from our outdoor wood boiler that I dumped out earlier that morning. Turns out they were still smoldering, even after cooling in a covered trash can overnight.

The fireman said, “I put mine in a cement bunker for a week before dumping them.”